Norton, Andre - Anthology (23 page)

 
          
 
The other's expression did not alter as he
cast the flask, not at Martin but at the ground midway between him and Dory.

 
          
 
The missile flew fast, but it traveled
scarcely a foot before shattering with great force, seemingly on the air
itself.

 
          
 
The botanist gasped, but his nerve held. Even
as the remnants of the flask dropped to the ground, he leaped for the street
behind him. Speed alone would buy him his life now.

 
          
 
He went to his knees, the breath driven out of
him.

 
          
 
Ambrose's senses steadied. He had hit
something, a wall of some sort. It was fully perceptible to his fingers
although completely invisible. It must have been this which had stopped and
broken the flask . ..

 
          
 
His eyes fixed on the greasy-looking smoke
boiling out of the seething contents of his shattered weapon. He shrank back as
far as he could from it and covered his mouth and nose with several thicknesses
of his cloak.

 
          
 
His body gave a tremendous jerk, then another
that threw him flat. His face twisted, darkened, as he fought for air and
against that which the air surrounding him contained. He was not aware of the
others. Only the agony of the present and the terror of the judgment and
eternity before him existed for him now.

 
          
 
Within minutes, it was over. Martin looked
into the contorted face of the dead man. "A hard ending and a just
one."

 
          
 
He gestured sharply with his hand. Fire
answered, pale yellow flames that touched neither cloth nor flesh but consumed
the venom in the air and that still clinging to the broken glass.

 
          
 
He looked at the woman. She was staring at the
corpse, her eyes huge with horror, but she responded at once to his soft call.

 
          
 
"Remove your dome now," he told her
gently.

 
          
 
She did so. "I was right to distrust
him," she said. "He was as malignant as those poisons of his."

 
          
 
Dory stared once more at the body. "He
probably didn't even know Sammy, but he wanted him to die, just so he could see
how long it would take for one little boy to kill his friend, the same as he
wanted to see how long it would take Jasmine to die when she accidentally
poisoned herself in his courtyard."

 
          
 
"Ambrose had reason to permit the
experiment to continue, the love of pure knowledge aside. His profession
demanded that he develop new techniques and new angles of approach."

 
          
 
The apprentice looked sharply at her teacher.
"His profession?"

 
          
 
"I didn't dismiss your observations about
the nature of his plantings, especially when I read over your notes and saw how
well you had documented them, though I did think you'd grossly overestimated
the number of totally baleful varieties. That did prove true in many cases when
I consulted more advanced sources than we have in the house, but what remained
was far too high a percentage to be dismissed as a scholar's curiosities. He
didn't have the land to squander like that.

 
          
 
"I became even more suspicious when I had
his affairs thoroughly investigated by members of our order and discovered that
those investments of his were negligible. They provided no practical support.
His medical trade alone wasn't doing it all, either. It supplied a sufficient
income to maintain him very quietly here, but not nearly enough to buy the
wines stocking his cellar or the quality furnishings in his home. It certainly
did not pay for the lodgings he took and the entertainments he enjoyed when he
went off to the capital, as he did several times a year.

 
          
 
"We had a job ferreting it out, but our
Ambrose had yet another profession, one at which he excelled to the point that
he didn't have to actually work at it often. That was why he seized upon the
opportunity to study the situation that developed here. A lot of influential
people have loyal, loving small children who would not mind giving Da medicine
to cure his cold or a special sweet to Mama. A master assassin could capitalize
on that fact.”

 
          
 
Dory stared at him. She shuddered. "It's
a miracle we escaped," she whispered. She frowned. "It was a queer
weapon, though, wasn't it?"

 
          
 
"I think it was pure chance that he had
the flask on him. He must have been en route either to deliver it to someone
else or to carry out a commission. Your night's work has saved a life, or lives,
probably. That gas could have taken out a roomful of people and was likely
intended to do just that."

 
          
 
The apprentice shivered again. She held out
her arms to Trouble, who leaped into her embrace. She pressed him tightly
against her. "I couldn't have done anything at all without Trouble. He was
brave and calm through it all and kept me thinking and acting correctly."

 
          
 
The pink tongue rasped her chin. Let the
kitten believe that. For his part, it had been a horrifying experience almost
from the start, and he was very glad to be here, alive and secure in his Dory's
arms.

 
          
 
The tom collected himself. He could not resign
his responsibilities because of relief or residual fear. Humans seemed able to
concentrate on only one thing, one danger, at a time, without recognizing all
the other shadows looming around them. So we have one dead butcher whom no one
else knows for a killer, and George's story will put Dory here at the right
time.

 
          
 
Martin smiled. "Good thinking, cat. Don't
worry. Ambrose, along with the pieces of his flask, will be discovered on the
floor of his own study. The townsfolk will be left to wonder whether it was his
heart, accident, or suicide that finished him. Ordinarily, I don't approve of
tampering with evidence, but this is rather an exception."

 
          
 
Naturally. We are involved, the cat remarked
dryly.

 
          
 
"Precisely."

 
          
 
Dory's eyes darkened as a troubling thought
came to her. "How many will die or stay sick now that Ambrose isn't here
to supply medicines for them?"

 
          
 
Martin gave her a quick, respectful look.
"Well questioned. I believe I can help with that. There's a nice young
fellow in our order whose specialty is botany."

 
          
 
"Young?"

 
          
 
"Only about one hundred seventy-five
years old." He chuckled, then grew serious again. "It's about time
for him to move again, and I think he'll be pleased to take over this
business."

 
          
 
His smile broadened as a graceful gray form
slipped into the alley and rubbed against his leg. "Here's my little lady.
Ye three go back into the house—under an invisibility shield, please,
considering Dory's rather unconventional state of dress. I'll finish up here
and then join ye inside. I think ye have a story to tell me."

 
          
 
Trouble purred. hworth the hearing, but what
else could you expect with two cats and a sorceress acting in league?

 
          
 
The man bowed his head in agreement.
"Nothing less, Master Trouble, and maybe a great deal more as time goes
on."

            
Sharman Horwood is a
Canadian, who currently lives abroad. She works at the Hankuk University of
Foreign Studies in
Seoul
,
Republic
of
South Korea
.

            
The first time I
realized my cat, Tinkerbell, or Tink for short, was nursing me was when she was
about three years old. Long hyperspace transits laid me out with migraines, especially
the longest jumps that never seemed to end. I was one of the unlucky 0.1% whose
brain chemistry didn't respond well to the transfer from realtime

into null and then back again. To me the transit felt like I was
tumbling in and out of reality, stretched between dimensions while solid
objects thinned, dissolving about me. There time was a river through a nonland where
what was, still could be, and what would be was possible now. I felt like I
could reach out, slip my fingers through metal walls like gray cotton candy and
finger space outside of my ship, letting it flow like dark, substanceless water
over my fingertips.

            
Then the ship's
engines would thunk, cutting back in, and the hyperspace field would disappear
as the anti-mass generator whispered to a stop. As the ship settled back into
normal space, I would head for my cabin. Usually I made it to my bunk before
the pain and nausea really began. The longer the transits were, the longer I
was out of real space, the harder it was to settle back into reality. My
thoughts were easily lost, overwhelmed out there by the empty spaces between
the stars. I always felt like I was whisked into pieces and that parts of me
were still out there, left behind, trying to slip their ethereal ways back. I
knew Tink would be waiting to pull me back in, to help me through the pain that
lurked, waiting like some monstrous nightmare, for me alone.

 
          
 
I'd prepare everything before the jump,
setting out the pills I'd need to take as soon as the Veritage came out of
transit, painkillers lined up in a row beside my bunk, only so many and no
more, with a couple of anti-nausea pills to make sure I'd keep the painkillers
down. Within minutes of lying down, Tink would be there, sometimes meeting me
at my cabin door. Sometimes I felt as if she'd traveled through hyperspace with
my disembodied self, anticipating how I'd feel as we slipped back into
realspace, ready at my side. In my cabin, she'd curl up against my side,
fitting herself into the curve of my waist, her fur silky soft. She'd purr even
before she jumped up beside me, soothing me before the pain really kicked in,
and she'd keep purring the whole time she was there. I got to know exactly when
the pain would dissolve because every time, moments before it left, Tink would
leave, too, slipping out the doorway quiet as night. Sometimes she'd briefly
lick my hand when the pain was bad, her tongue a flicker like feathers against
my skin. I came to expect to find,her there beside me in the cool darkness.

 
          
 
I'd brought Tink to space with me to my first
posting on a small merchant ship, the Veritage, the same ship I eventually
owned along with my two partners, Cor and Pak. I'd brought her in part as
investment, along with several packets of frozen sperm of cat breeds, in case
any new colony worlds wanted cats to keep the pest population down. Many worlds
had minor pests, vicious and difficult to be rid of. that ate supplies and food
and even sometimes worried away at small children. Cats are superb hunters of
anything small that moves. But I'd also brought her for companionship, to keep
me company and remind me of the home I was used to.

 
          
 
My partners came to accept Tink as part of the
crew. Cor and Pak were twins. They both had biological stock of their own. but
over the years, the need for new stock dropped, and they let their companions
go to good homes on planets we'd passed. But they never suggested that we leave
Tink. She was part of the team, and they expected her to be around almost as
much as I did.

 
          
 
On EVA as the polarization on a faulty suit
helmet failed. Pak had lost his eyesight when he for one unguarded moment
looked directly into the fire of a sun. He had glass-covered implants to take
the place of his eyes, but they never took the same place as real e not seeing
as much as binocular vision did. They saw more than biological implants in
infrared and x-ray range, which was why Pak had chosen them as replacements,
but they lost a significant portion of peripheral vision. He couldn't see
around a corner and what lay at his feet at the same time, for instance.

 
          
 
He always swore Tink knew what he could and
could not see. She would step back and to the side when he approached a corner
of any kind, letting him go first. He never stepped on her. so she never
learned that trick by-accident. She also often meowed at him. just to let him
know she was there if she wasn't precisely in his field of vision. She just
seemed to know his limits.

 
          
 
Cor also expected Tink to be there,
particularly after she once watched Tink chase a large Cadwallader pup out of
our docking bay. Tink was out on her own on a minor exploration of the docking
area. This was one of the first things she did whenever we landed in port. Most
cats were suspicious and hesitant about strange places. Tink was also
suspicious, but she always wanted to check them out. She seemed to think this
was her duty as part of the ship's crew, no matter how much we tried to keep
her in. This Cadwallader didn't see her. It started up the docking ramp, slow
and reptilian with short, stubby legs and a long tail that waved in the air
behind it. It was just curious. Tink was about hundred feet away when she saw
it. She fluffed up like she'd been hit by lightning and side-winded across the
deck in a dead-mad run. The Cadwallader didn't even see her coming. She landed
on his head, going straight for his eyes. Cor said she heard it screeching far
down the docking level, long after Tink had dropped off. After that at every
port, Cor bought Tink some kind of treat, a toy or a special bit of meat. She
said Tink earned it even if she seemed to sleep all the time we were under way.

 
          
 
Tink always assumed everything was her
responsibility, too. When she had kittens, she looked after them obsessively,
up until the time they were old enough to go to their appointed colony homes.
She ran to eat or to use her litter box, talking to them the whole way, louder
the farther away she went, a yowl that slipped around ship doorways and
corridors. When her kittens were a little older, she'd place them with me, an
unwilling babysitter; she'd slip them into the bunk with me while I slept,
nudging them down underneath the covers and leaving them there while she took a
couple of hours to herself, stubbornly checking the ship over to be sure
everything was as it should be. When she didn't have kittens, she looked after
me instead. I don't think it ever occurred to her that I didn't quite need her
help. She just did it, like comforting me while I was in pain.

 
          
 
She was with me for nineteen years, very much
a part of my life. There came a time of course when she couldn't be with me any
more. It didn't happen until she'd been with me for all of those nineteen
years, ever my small colleague among tfie stars, but one night she curled up
beside me as always. When I woke, she'd gone with my dreams, slipping out by a
doorway not quite open to me. I never stopped missing her. I always expected
her to be there, too, when I came out of a long hyperspace jump. It was about
this time, also, that my body seemed to adjust, probably just changing with
age, and the headaches diminished. I thought it was just my imagination that
said Tink had stayed as long as she thought I needed her.

 
          
 
A couple of years after she passed away, we
were in the Renoult arm of the galaxy, where there were few people and small
profits. My partners and I had decided to go there on the off chance that this
thin spiral of stars might have some opportunities that other merchants had
missed. Business had not been good, and we were trying to sell some old stock
at the same time as looking for new kinds of goods. We didn't have much luck
except for a whisper about rare minerals farther out on the arm.

 
          
 
I set up the board for the longest jump we'd
ever taken. There were few stars in this thin end of the galaxy's whirl through
space. It was like they were strewn, broadcast to seed dark space with their
dim light. Pak and Cor had left the bridge to take this jump in their cabins.
Cor would take over as soon as we were out of hyperspace and I had to leave my
chair. I didn't expect to have the severe reactions to a long jump as I'd had
in the past, so I was only semiprepared with medicine in my cabin. I hadn't had
a bad attack for a long time, and, if necessary, I would probably have little
difficulty in staying with the board after the jump, but just in case, Cor was
ready. I gave the transit initiation signal, setting up the alarm sequences in
case anything failed while we were out there. Lights dimmed and the engines
gathered power before they cut out, a solid thrum that vibrated through the
metal floors and hull. The anti-mass generator whined up to full speed as the
energy from the engines flowed into it. The hyperspace field began to flow
about the Veritage, wrapping us in its gray cocoon. Radar pinged when it
shouldn't have, just as we slipped out of real space.

 
          
 
I don't know what hit us. It was small and
fast, and left like an explosion, piercing the empty cargo hold as it speeded
through both sides of our hull. Hyperspace descended, engulfing us, just as the
alarms started to howl. The failsafes to throw us back into realspace didn't
kick in. I reached for the board, and fell . . .

 
          
 
. . . felt like I was drowning. The inside-out
feeling that was triggered by the jump didn't go away. It stayed, swallowing me
in great waves of tidal seas made from thick water. I still tried to reach for
the board, but I was reaching through gray water that swept me away, drawing me
out on dark seas that tossed me about, breaking me apart into small bits cast
on spreading waves.

 
          
 
I tried to call out, but my voice dissolved in
the back of my throat. I could hear Cor calling from her cabin. Her voice took
shape in the dark water, and I could see it drifting along with me like a beam
of light or pale smoke that followed me out into the darkness. Time stretched
out and I felt us slip away on its surface, surfing down a dark illimitable
wave of a darker nonreal-ity. My fingers reached out, and grew longer, thinning
out into ghostlike wisps of pale smoke. My body spread out ahead of them,
flowing out through the ship, body and voice both as smoke dissolved in the
dark immensity of hyperspace as they flowed through walls that disappeared in fragmented
atoms.

 
          
 
I drifted there for what seemed like hours
even though I knew it was no more than an instant. I felt the gravity of stars
that weren't there, pockets of mass I flowed around, almost sliding down into
their depths, back into realspace. I passed them and let their gravity pull me
down, almost breaking through into realspace before hyperspace's attractive
force balanced realspace's power and pulled me away again. I slipped back and
forth, one moment almost in realspace, one moment trying to find the edge of
hyperspace's nondimension. I felt as if I floated on waves of time, breaching
on black shores of realspace, each wave pulling me back out into darker,
unstill waters. My real self was dissolving on these seas, losing form, losing
reality and dimension. I tried to reach back and seize the hull of the ship in
formless fingers but it slipped through them like water through dry sand.

 
          
 
"Lise, what's happening? Lise." I
could still hear and see Cor's voice but it was fainter, less real. As my fingers
slid through its pale light, I could feel Cor's voice. Its light flowed into me
and for one desperate moment, it held the dissolving particles of myself
together with its added power. But the roar of hyperspace flowed back over me,
and drew me past it back into the gulf between being and nonbeing.

 
          
 
I drifted there in immeasurable space where
time was not a dimension. Memory turned in upon itself. The past was now. . . .

 
          
 
"Don't touch that, Tink," I pulled a
string away from her as she leaped after it. I briefly wondered why I pulled
rather than taking it up out of her reach but the thought dissolved before I
could answer it. I held onto the string, drawing Tink closer where I could hear
her, a faint purr. As the end of the string disappeared between my fingers, I
could feel her nose nudge my hand, and her purr tickled through my fingers.
Tink nudged again, harder this time, a soft bump against my hand, pushing all
of me. Darkness shimmered. Tink pushed again and her purr surged, a wave of
sound sweeping through me, holding me together. I reached out to stroke her as
another wave of sound from her cascaded over me, rolling me forward, propelling
me ahead with its energy.